When I worked at NASA, I dated an aerospace engineer, originally from London, charming accent and all. I lived in Houston then, and from time to time an old boyfriend from Texas City showed up, unannounced, to see me or Gloria, my roommate. Sometimes the engineer was there. He was an educated man, successful, a real grown-up (I was 19), but still. I expected a little push-back at this parade of old beaus. I asked him why he took it so calmly.

“I know a gentleman when I see one,” he said. “The young men from Texas City – at least the ones who come to see you and Gloria – are obviously gentlemen. No need for anyone to be rude.”

His attitude was positively British, but the idea of the “Texas City gentleman” appealed to me. I would have pursued “Philosopher” as a profession, but to this day I’ve never seen an ad saying “Philosopher Wanted.” Alas, philosophizing remains a hobby, and the philosophical question posed by the Brit was this. What makes a gentleman, whether they come from sophisticated London or down-home Texas City?

The engineer was right. I knew that. The boys I dated from Texas City were gentlemen. From what I observed, the other boys at school behaved themselves, too. I double-dated quite a bit, and the boys who went out with my friends, all gentlemen.

That’s what I remember best about Texas City boys – they were un-presumptuous, well-mannered, and so damn nice. They were gentlemen.

It was a time when girls who behaved like ladies were treated like ladies, so a component of being a gentleman then was respect for ladies? It’s just a question. The word woman versus lady has become politically incorrect, and I wouldn’t turn back the clock on the progress of women, but in certain social matters, I’m not so sure they’ve played it right. Young women today can enjoy all the freedom they want and still be a lady, and that’s the right and proper thing. What seems to be missing for some, though, is the freedom to say no without explanation or apology.

Did being a gentleman mean knowing the rules, not only your own, but those of others, and respecting those rules?

Under the watchful eye of the Butterfly, I began my dating life, and the boys respected the limits set by me and/or my mother.

In the spring of ninth grade my mother pronounced me grown up enough to date, beyond talking on the telephone and being driven to a dance or a movie by parents. My unsettled early childhood made me more mature than girls who grew up in cozier nests, plus because of my November birthday, I was a year older than many of my classmates. I was going on 16 in the spring of 1961.

I was thrilled! It wasn’t that I couldn’t wait to go with boys. I just couldn’t wait to go. Period. I liked boys, liked their conversation and their company, but the prospect of going places made me tremble with anticipation. Everything seemed like an adventure, and key to this was the car. I didn’t care what kind of car, as long as it got us where we were going. Boys had cars or access to cars. Most girls didn’t (even after I got my license, I was rarely allowed to use the family car).

Then my mother spelled out the rules.

Butterfly Rule No. 1: Don’t get pregnant.

Don’t get pregnant? I was dumb-founded.

How could riding around with boys in cars make me pregnant? When I was 12 years old my mother related the appallingly mechanical “facts of life,” but this wasn’t that. Like many small town girls, I was emotionally mature but naïve. Did my mother leave something out in Butterfly Sex/Ed 101?

It took me about three dates to sort this out. The strong pull of the full moon combined with the privacy of a car and two healthy young people could lead to trouble, alright. As far as the fine young men of Texas City, I’m sure while sitting at home watching TV they respected this rule. I’m not sure how they felt after 20 minutes with a girl in a car. Or if they thought about it at all. But then, they weren’t afraid they would get pregnant.

Butterfly Rule No. 2. Home by 11 o’clock.

I was invited to Senior Night on the Town in 1962, and I told the young man I had to be home by 11 o’clock, so did he still want to take me? He did. A gentleman doesn’t withdraw an invitation because the rules don’t suit him (in the end, I was allowed to stay out a little later). Al Mitchell, quite a helpful Texas City historian, tells me this picture (right) resides in the TC Museum. When he sent it to me, I didn’t recognize myself. I zoomed in (ah, the digital age), and realized it’s me. I’m sure, because I’m wearing my mother’s crystal necklace and earrings, a set she loved. Thanks, Mom. For a lot of things.

Butterfly Rule No. 3. No going steady.

This rule suited me, whether my mother knew it or not. Was I Baby Butterfly? Even in 1961 this was a shocking idea, one I didn’t want to think about (philosophically or otherwise).

No, not going steady suited me because shortly after my parents’ divorce, I asked my mother why she married my father in the first place. I wouldn’t know the full story of the Butterfly and the Bombardier until 45 years later, but my mother dropped a permanent bomb in my brain with her answer.

“Well. He wasn’t abusive before we got married.”

Boom in my head, and a new guiding principle slithered up out of the brain rubble. No one puts a ring in my nose or on my finger, friendship, wedding, or otherwise. Before I ever heard the term “fear of commitment,” I had it. Many girls went steady, sometimes for a long time, sometimes forever, and it worked out well for them, but it wasn’t for me.

I expected Rule No. 4 would be a restriction on frequency of going out, but it wasn’t. I could go out as often as I wanted on weekends (no school nights), as long as it was with different boys. Too much time spent with one boy – now that was trouble. Trouble, which starts with T and rhymes with P, and doesn’t stand for pool, as claimed by The Music Man. The Big P for girls wasn’t pool (still isn’t).

I was new to the dating world when I met Rex at the roller skating rink, and he was a perfect example of a guy who had the undeserved reputation for being a “bad boy.” His older brother was a bad boy who knocked over the 7-Eleven store on the north end of Sixth Street and did time in Huntsville. In TC, stuff like this rubbed off on family members, but before Rex asked me out, he told me about his brother. If he didn’t, someone else would. I can still see him standing there at the skating rink, trying to look off-hand and tough, not realizing there’s never been a boy born who could look tough wearing roller skates.

“People don’t like me because of my brother.” He looked away, shy, embarrassed, and adorable.

On our very first date he took me home to meet his mother, a kind lady who gave us Cokes and brownies. Rex taught me to drive a stick shift in the ugliest car I ever saw, a maroon Studebaker with gold hubcaps hand-painted by him. He taught me to play the guitar, too, placing my fingers gently on the frets. I refused to trim my pretty nails, and he shrugged. “You won’t be any good on the guitar if you don’t.” I learned enough to play a folk song or two, but I had as much talent for the guitar as the clarinet. In a word – none.

My classmate Armelia dated Rex’s friend, Bill Haire (RIP), Class of ’63. The four of us went to the ninth grade prom and out to eat afterwards, chicken fried steak, gravy, biscuits – all for a dollar, and no calorie worries when you’re young and active. We had a great time all through the summer of 1961.

When Armelia fell out of love with Bill, he was heartbroken. I ran into him down on Sixth Street, and he offered me a ride home. We sat in his car for a few minutes while he poured his heart out about his lost love. I commiserated and gave him a hug. By the time I got home, Rex had called a dozen times. His buddies had reported seeing his girl (me) “making out” with Bill. I set Rex straight, and as soon as I hung up, Armelia called. Her friends had reported in, also, and she assured me if it was true, it was alright with her. Small towns. Gotta love ‘em.

Rex was smart, funny, talented, and independent. When I wouldn’t go steady, he said OK. He would date other girls. No problem. True to human nature, I didn’t like that part, and if the Butterfly had relaxed her rule, I might have relaxed mine, but she stuck to it.

Rex brimmed with joie de vivre, and he found school intolerably boring. He drove too fast, hung out at the pool hall, and once parked his car up over the curb and onto one of the grassy rings in the TCHS parking lot. He cut too many classes and was about to flunk out, so he joined the Navy early in 1962. We were too young for the relationship we might have had if he stayed around. But Rex was a gentleman who didn’t smoke when I asked him not to, and when he taught me to drive, he never lost patience or yelled at me. When I said no, about anything, that was the end of it.

In the early 60s dating was uncomplicated and innocent. And inexpensive. Many of the most fun things, like the beach, were free. Gas cost between 11 cents and 18 cents a gallon, and movie tickets cost about a dollar. The girls were polite, too, and kept in mind that popcorn and candy cost extra. We looked at the right side of menus before ordering. Gifts might be an Everly Brothers record or a stuffed toy, or for Christmas, maybe a silver charm from Hetherington’s Jewelry down on Sixth Street – all the girls wore charm bracelets.

By “innocent” I don’t mean no one fooled around. Normal human beings are hard-wired to fool around. Some kids “went all the way,” and maybe some were ready for that. I don’t know who did what with whom, and I wouldn’t say if I did. Most of the boys claimed they “did it,” but the rules of chivalry applied. They didn’t name names. OK, sometimes they did, and such a specific claim caused people to think less of them. It was ungentlemanly. Naturally, the girls said they didn’t “do it.” I believed both stories – did and didn’t – but the purpose of dating was for young people to get to know each, and it was a process that took time.

Fred from the Class of ’64 sent me an astonishing bullet-list of memories, some 162 of them, such as French fries at Bostick’s, wooden floors at Rock’s, Hi-Fi consoles, returnable coke bottles, iodine and baby oil, Spoolies, shower cap hairdryers, wooden tennis rackets, but my favorite was “Galveston dates on Saturday night.”

In Galveston it’s always summer in my memory. The breeze, the clean smell of the ocean, the sounds – seagulls, surf, and the steady, cheerful beat of Bongo Joe down by the pier.

There was putt-putt golf and a stretch of concrete down on the northeast end of the island where cars could be driven up and down the sides of a paved embankment. We rode the Bolivar ferry and rented bicycles-built-for-two. I liked to sit in front so I could steer, and I loved to run the thing between the white concrete benches and the edge of the seawall. One guy jumped off after we cleared the narrow strip and swore he would hitch-hike to Denver before he would get back on the bike with me “driving.”

I loved the beach. There wasn’t a movie I didn’t want to see. I loved to dance, I loved to eat. I loved the old wooden roller coaster, and I cried when they tore it down. There was swimming and sunning, and going in groups in two cars, so you could close a blanket in the doors and make a shade tent between the cars. I loved the tiny transistor radios you couldn’t hear more than two feet away.

There was a Tilt House, a walk-through attraction with a simple premise. The house was built at an extreme angle resulting in illusions that defied gravity. Angled floors and walls made it appear as if water flowed uphill or a broom stood upright on an angled floor. Everything about it made me laugh.

I loved the beautiful movie palaces like the State and the Grand, and I loved exploring the old fortresses built to protect the island from German U-Boats – Fort Crockett, Fort Travis, Fort San Jacinto.

When I think of the boys I dated, I’m so proud of them. Not only were they gentlemen, they behaved like men, not little boys. Sure, some drank, caroused, got in fights, but even so, my sense of it is, there were limits. I know they behaved themselves around me.

I dated one or two bad boys who didn’t last when I found them out. Kenneth (from La Marque), funny and good-looking, needed to be watched, and I sensed that. After a few dates, he said it would be him and only him, or he was done with me. I said OK, we’re done. No hard feelings. When he drove me home I accidentally left my sweater in his car. The next night he doused it with gasoline and set it on fire in my driveway. I guess he had hard feelings. I only regretted the loss of the sweater.

The boys who were willing to take me out on my own terms didn’t say I love you madly, or you’re so wonderful. They said You’re a good sport – you always have a good time. Thus I  learned that if you want others to have fun, have fun yourself. I had a wonderful time, and I think my dates did, too. They were gentlemen by nature, by raising, and because being ladies and gentlemen was an important value then.

I had a carefree good time between 10^th and 11^th grades, and then the inevitable happened. In junior year I fell in love, and it changed things. But that’s another story.

NEXT:  Hurricane Carla